Government Alerts and Capitalization

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I just finished hand sifting through thousands of words-to-capitalize by hand that we'll be adding to the government alerts automatically in order to fix the capitalization errors.

These errors occur because we convert from all caps to "Sentence-case", however, that process only capitalizes the first word of each sentence, which ends up making words like "tuesday" and "february" look strange.

Machine Learning is an alternative solution but we're going to give this a shot first and then improve it as we go. :)

Environment Canada Alert Criteria

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Ever wonder about the criteria that Environment Canada uses to issues their alerts. Here is the link for severe thunderstorms watches and warnings https://www.canada.ca/en/environment-climate-change/services/types-weather-forecasts-use/public/criteria-alerts.html#severeThunderstorm. If you scroll up and down the page you can see all the other alerts as well (for example Wreckhouse Winds 💨😮). Some of the alerts are location specific and also the criteria can be different for different locations and different times of the year as well. Our app will send out push notifications (if enabled) and the Environment Canada alerts will appear in our app. Not all thunderstorms for example meet the criteria for a watch or a warning.

Huge App Update version 480

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HUGE APP UPDATE!
Version 480 is available to download on the App Stores! Woohoo!

iOS: http://apple.instantweatherapp.com

Android: http://android.instantweatherapp.com

1. No more missing radar imagery. Yes!!!

2. Improved severe weather notification system (custom Instant Updates for severe weather now included)!

3. When the app is minimized and opened, it stays where you were. Only when the app is completely closed does it open back to your top location

4. Alert pop-up box for all notifications that can be dismissed or take you to the new alert by pressing "Display"

5. Fixed UV colours

6. Several bug and performances tweaks

Woohoo! Thank you!! - Adam

Text Message Alerts and app alerts

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Several have asked this question and I wanted to clarify the answer:

Question: "Do we still need to subscribe to Text Message Alerts if your free app is able to send out alerts?"

Answer: Text Message Alerts remain our most reliable option for alerts as they do not require internet access in order to work. Our free app InstantWeather always requires internet access to work and therefore, if your internet gets interrupted for whatever reason, you could potentially miss important notifications for tornado activity, etc.

During a violent tornado, the power often goes out which means Wi-Fi will go down for most. What happens then is, everyone tries to use cell tower data at the same time and unfortunately, it gets so bogged down that almost zero alerts come through from any option. The Ottawa tornadoes from 2018 are a perfect example of this as 10's of thousands complained that they did not receive any Tornado Warnings from any system, even though they were issued in advance. This was likely due to so many using the cell tower at the same time that most did not have the require LTE signal strength to receive automated government alerts. The only method that had a hope of getting through during those clogged times was a basic Text Message Alert (SMS) as it still works on weaker signal strengths such as Edge, 2G, and 3G.

I hope that makes sense and if you have any further questions regarding this, feel free to send us a private message or an email at help@InstantWeather.ca A huge thank you to those who continue to subscribe to our Text Message Alerts and to those who use our free app InstantWeather! Ultimately, the combination of the two is the best option as no single system is perfect. We also recommend downloading Environment Canada's mobile app WeatherCAN for alerts.

You can never be too redundant when it comes to critical alerts during tornado season. <3

- Adam

Our sincerest apologies

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UPDATE: the servers are back up and running and the app should be functioning normally. Thank you for your patience.

Our sincerest apologies to Hamilton. This Tornado Warning was an error. A US county called Hamilton County caused an error in our system. We are working hard on a fix for it.

IMPORTANT: I’ve shut down our app servers until tomorrow morning (potentially as late as 10:00 AM ET) so the app will not load until then. My sincerest apologies for the unexpected downtime. I could start them up now as we have disabled the US system which will stop any US Tornado Warnings being sent to Hamilton app users. However, there could be remaining alerts waiting to be sent when I turn it back on and it’s currently 12:42am. I’d rather not risk sending any further alerts to Hamilton until we fix this bug. Thank you for your patience and my apologies for the error.

Adam

Why Weather Advisories may come later

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You may have noticed that we send out Environment Canada's "Weather Advisories" a few minutes after other services. There's a very good reason for this; when "Weather Advisories" are first issued, they're blank;

"Weather advisory in effect. Please continue to monitor alerts and forecasts issued by Environment Canada.

We feel this is a waste of your time as you have to wait for roughly 2-5 minutes for any details to show up and therefore, we ignore any blank "Weather Advisories" and instead, send them out the instant they're updated with details.

This is specifically for "Advisories" as "Statements", "Watches", and "Warnings" have detailed descriptions immediately upon being issued and we send those out instantly.

Hope that makes sense and we may add this as a settings option for those who want to wait around for a few minutes refreshing their app until details come out. 😀

Adam

Facebook Poll: Continued alerts from EC

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We're planning on improving how the app deals with "Continued" alerts from EC. We're thinking of creating a new option called "Updated" which we would only use if a "Continued" alert had changed with new information in the description.

The idea would be to have options in settings that let you choose the notifications you want.

Please choose the one option that makes the most sense to you. Thank you!

Issued = Alert is first created
Continued = Alert continues with the same information
Updated = Alert continues with new information
Ended = Alert ends

Poll options are below

Send me: Issued, Updated, Ended only. However, if it's related to a tornado, send me any Continued alerts too.

Send me: Issued, Updated, Ended only. No continued with the same info.

Send me: Issued, Updated, Continued, and Ended. I want it all, even if it doesn't change.

Send me: Issued and Ended only. I don't want Updated or Continued alerts.

Adam

Please see the Facebook group for the actual poll